Mailing List Archive: Python: Python

MSDOS/Windows program files

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arundelo at mediaone

Aug 19, 2001, 12:25 AM

Post #1 of 5 (629 views)
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MSDOS/Windows program files

I'm running Python 2.1.1 on Win98. (My Linux box is down for
repairs.) When I save and run a program file I get "SyntaxError:
invalid syntax" on whatever the last line happens to be, even if it's
a comment. I assume that Python does not like whatever
end-of-file character is being put there, but interactive mode
reacts properly to ctrl-z.

It happens no matter whether I use EDIT or Notepad to create
the file.

Thank you for your help!

--Aaron Brown

peter at engcorp

Aug 19, 2001, 7:06 AM

Post #2 of 5 (581 views)
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MSDOS/Windows program files [In reply to]

Aaron Brown wrote:
> I'm running Python 2.1.1 on Win98. (My Linux box is down for
> repairs.) When I save and run a program file I get "SyntaxError:
> invalid syntax" on whatever the last line happens to be, even if it's
> a comment. I assume that Python does not like whatever
> end-of-file character is being put there, but interactive mode
> reacts properly to ctrl-z.

Maybe that's a bad assumption. Why not post your code?

> It happens no matter whether I use EDIT or Notepad to create
> the file.

Neither EDIT nor Notepad append a Ctrl-Z to the end of a file,
and in fact both show it when you edit the file and allow it to
be removed...

Furthermore Python doesn't seem to mind the Ctrl-Z other than
that it treats it as end-of-file and ignores anything that
comes after it (on Windows). It doesn't generate a SyntaxError
on my machine with any number of test files I just tried.

I can't reproduce your problem with any experiments I've
tried, so I think your assumptions might be wrong.
(Doesn't SyntaxError always point to the erroneous code
with a little caret symbol ^ ? Post your error message!)

--
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter [at] engcorp

arundelo at mediaone

Aug 19, 2001, 9:09 AM

Post #3 of 5 (571 views)
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MSDOS/Windows program files [In reply to]

Peter Hansen wrote:

> Maybe that's a bad assumption. Why not post your code?

You were right -- it was my code! The fact that the error
message caret always pointed to the last line of the program,
even if it was a comment, was just a symptom of an input
statement earlier in the program that looked like this:

input("Spam?"

So the interpreter was just waiting around for that trailing
parenthesis.

Your response inspired me to go through the program and
selectively comment everything out -- I felt pretty silly when I
found the mistake. Thanks for the help!

--Aaron

arundelo at mediaone

Aug 22, 2001, 9:02 AM

Post #4 of 5 (578 views)
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MSDOS/Windows program files [In reply to]

[.I already sent this in, and Peter got his cc, but for some
reason it apparently never appeared here on the newsgroup,
so here's another copy:]

Peter Hansen wrote:

> Maybe that's a bad assumption. Why not post your code?

You were right -- it was my code! The fact that the error
message caret always pointed to the last line of the program,
even if it was a comment, was just a symptom of an input
statement earlier in the program that looked like this:

input("Spam?"

So the interpreter was just waiting around for that trailing
parenthesis.

Your response inspired me to go through the program and
selectively comment everything out -- I felt pretty silly when I
found the mistake. Thanks for the help!

--Aaron

ralf.muschall at alphasat

Aug 23, 2001, 1:41 PM

Post #5 of 5 (574 views)
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MSDOS/Windows program files [In reply to]

"Aaron Brown" <arundelo [at] mediaone> writes:

> input("Spam?"
>
> So the interpreter was just waiting around for that trailing
> parenthesis.

A common trick to detect such bugs in languages without semantic
indenting is to reformat the whole source (C-x h C-M-\). All lines
below the error are then rightshifted, making the bad place stand out.

Is there any trick to do something like this automatically in Python?

Ralf

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